Goals and advice needed

FlamesAreWicked said
I am.. on the street, if you’re in the ball park of high 12s - low 13s…it won’t be a huge difference in feel since it’ll be a ball of tire smoke with our crappy roads. Since we live in a world now that flat tappet cam failures are more and more common.. while expensive, converting to a roller cam has its appeal. With its not so great compression in stock form.. I dunno if I wanna spend an easy 1000-1200 for minimal improvement.

the whole cam failures are wildly exaggerated. if it was such a problem we would be hearing about it on the regular, like somebody would be posting at least once a week. does it happen? yes. are there bad parts out there? absolutely! should that dissuade you from using a flat tappet? i don't think so.

FlamesAreWicked said
I have to keep tellin myself it doesn’t all need to be done at once.. just tough to overlook doing things twice. I have a edelbrock performer 318/360 low rise intake for it.. also picked up a Holley 670 from a close friend for cheap that’s barely been used. I think that with some Doug’s or TTI headers will give some decent “seat of the pants” gains. May just do those things and reevaluate.

you have a pretty decent base to work with. performer and a 670 isn't a world beater, but those are perfectly cromulent parts to make a nice little hot rod. throw a set of dougs on there and splash the pot with some heads and you'll be cooking.

and the heads, they can port over to the next motor...

max low buck? sell the performer and pick up a hong kong phooey air gap and barter the 670 for something 750 and come out even stevens money wise and pick up a few ticks of performance.

FlamesAreWicked said
I might just pick up that mag 5.9 for $350 and store in reserve.. that way I’ll have something I can work on slowly for the future. Rings, bearings, and pistons.. we’ll see.

i would totally scoop that for future shenanigans.

FlamesAreWicked said
I tell ya, as a kid, my circle of friends and I used to think mid 13s was fast lol… I still think it’s pretty quick.. if ya read old car magazine tests of the hay day of muscle cars.. all of the big guns we’re 13s-14s. Of course that was old tire technology and they didn’t typically use professional drivers.

oh, here's the dirty secret: they DID use professional drivers! and... the cars were straight heaters!

but yeah, now soccer moms in minivans are clicking off 13's straight off the honda dealer's lot.